Course registration for the Fall 2021 semester has been postponed from April 20 to May 24 for continuing undergraduate and graduate students, since NYU must plan and readjust more than 1,000 rooms for in-person instruction. The fall class schedule will be made available on Albert on May 3. 

The rescheduling was announced in a March 18 email sent to the university community by senior university leadership. Provost Katherine Fleming did not respond to a request for comment. NYU Spokesperson John Beckman explained the university’s reasoning behind the rescheduling decision in a statement emailed to WSN.

“By delaying registration, we are giving the offices that manage classrooms and scheduling more time to plan in order to avoid making an inordinate number of scheduling adjustments later on,” Beckman wrote. “We want to offer students a schedule in which we have the highest level of confidence possible and that was not practical given our normal registration schedule.”

Beckman noted that the Provost’s office and the Registrar’s planning involves matching thousands of courses to a limited number of instruction locations available on campus. He also mentioned how science labs and acting classes with equipment or space requirements can only be scheduled in certain rooms.

For students, class registration for the upcoming academic year is the first step towards returning to normalcy.

“I’ve never really experienced a fully in-person semester, so I’m excited to be able to experience more of the campus life,” Liberal Studies first-year Amber Alirahi said. “Hopefully, things will transition into this new normal and we’ll have a typical college experience.”

Tzivia Appleman, a CAS junior and member of the Academic Affairs Committee of the University Senate, mentioned that next academic year, rising juniors will be the last cohort to remember a pre-pandemic semester at NYU.

“I love talking with people, and it’s so different when you’re staring at a screen all day,” Appleman said. “I’m looking forward to doing more group work and getting to know my classmates, and being present and not just on a screen.”

Beckman also said that the university is confident that any faculty member returning to the classroom will have access to the COVID-19 vaccination before the start of the academic year. NYU has been approved as a vaccination site, but has yet to receive any stock of the vaccines from the New York state administration.

“Normally, scheduling requires a lot of planning work but is aided by a fairly stable number of course offerings and classroom inventory from year to year,” Beckman said. “With so much related to COVID-19, there is an element of unpredictability, and we didn’t know until relatively recently how we’d proceed with classes for fall 2021 … We understand that students and faculty are anxious for more clarity in terms of planning for the fall 2021 — that will come.”

Email Rachel Cohen at [email protected].